Buffalo NY Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda: Don’t Give Cops AR-15s

“[Police Benevolent Association’s Vice President John Evans] recently told the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee that police need more in the way of firepower,” an editorial at New York’s Buffalo Newsreports. “He would like each of the department’s 450 to 500 patrol officers equipped with the likes of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, in addition to the .40-caliber Glock service handgun they currently carry.” Evans reckons officers are limited because the handgun has a range of only 50 to 100 yards. The AR-15 is effective at a range of hundreds of yards.” The Police Commissioner and the News disagree . . .

Derenda said department leaders are “studying the proposal,” but questioned whether each officer needs an AR-15 for standard patrol. We agree. Notwithstanding the firearm’s informal label as the civilian counterpart to the military-issued M16 or M4, this is too much lethality.

So it’s not “too much lethality” to be lethal with a handgun but it’s way too lethal to be lethal with rifle.

That aside, Mr. Evans’ argument for arming his officers with AR-15s was misleading and woefully incomplete. A rifle is far more accurate than a handgun at any distance. Which makes them less lethal than a handgun – at least in terms of not shooting innocent bystanders.

As a qualified Active Shooter Instructor, I can tell you without any reservations that a rifle is the best possible tool for stopping a threat, be it a criminal, a crazy or a terrorist. Lest we forget, it’s now standard practice for a responding officer to take the fight straight to the shooter, not to wait for backup. Apparently, the Police Commissioner and the News didn’t get the memo.

No one is questioning the inherent dangers faced by police every day. There may be situations where criminals or the mentally ill have greater firepower. Two years ago outside Rochester, an ex-convict set his car and house on fire and then ambushed firefighters, killing two and wounding two others. He was armed with an assault-type rifle and other weapons. Such circumstances call for specialized response, the reason police departments have SWAT teams.

Evans told reporters the PBA “is aware the department has a SWAT team with increased firepower.” He claims it can take up to an hour before the unit arrives at the scene after a patrol officer encounters a threat. Derenda says SWAT can be deployed rapidly. But if there is a delay, the answer is not giving every officer a high-powered rifle. Rather, any time lag deserves immediate attention and correction.

Derenda is reluctant to specify the department’s strategy and strength beyond saying the department is equipped to face terrorists and other threats. Such reticence is understandable – there’s no sense is helping criminals.

I’ve got something of a rep for being anti-cop. Not true. I’m anti-bad cop and against police militarization (e.g., MRAPs and over-reliance on SWAT teams). I’m also in favor of giving police the tools they need to do their jobs. Anything less is helping criminals.

And, by the way, I’m also against New York’s SAFE Act, which denies citizens the natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear the arms they need to defend themselves and other innocent life. The more AR-equipped law-abiding citizens — which [I hope] includes police — the better.

Dont forget that mortality rates need to be broken down by demographics. So, if the cops shoot too many black people they need to go out and get some Asians and whites to even out the bell curve. And dont forget that 3% of all shootings need to be on LGBT citizens lest the police be labelled as homophobic.

I would imagine that budgetary concerns weigh heavily on the department as well. At $.50 a pop for quality .223 ammo at the tax payers’ expense, the “every cop a rifleman” theory can get expensive.

there were also a few PDs that made the various site reports for now switching to reloading due to ammo budgets
also back when 6 shooters were standard sidearms, some PDs used to have a reloading room and person

I don’t believe there are major police agencies out there than only equip their officers with handguns. This clearly isn’t really about “handgun vs AR15”.

It is actually about “shotguns aren’t cool anymore”. We want cool rifles!

I’m quite certain that these officers already carry some sort of long gun in their patrol cars (probably an 870 or 500).

Personally, I think shotguns are usually good enough for police work, but I have no problem with officers having semi-auto rifles (like AR’s, Mini-14’s etc.) as well, or instead. If I was a LEO, I’d want all three (rifle, shotgun, and pistol) in my patrol car.

If I ever have to face a terrorist, or a deranged mass killer, I hope I have a good rifle in my hands.

Still, they should be honest and say what they actually mean. “Shotguns are limited by range, and are hard to use for small and weak officers (like some women officers)”. This isn’t about handguns.

I agree with you there. Honestly, what can an officer do with an AR that they cannot do with a shotgun? ARs have more capacity, but shotguns are (unarguably) more devastating per shot. ARs have more range, but even police snipers rarely shoot beyond 100 yards, much less a normal cop. Also, try putting a bean bag round in an AR. I think they should be issued shotguns, but allowed to carry personal rifles that qualify when they prove competency.

I haven’t seen any good science on it, but anecdotally, I have friends at a couple of major metros. In STL County they’ve had them for over a decade, at least one per squad, with no incidents that I can recall anyway.

The misuse of guns usually comes from a pistol and a hothead, or confusion, or something. Just in the time it takes to deploy a rifle, usually things are bit more under control.

We don’t need regular patrol cops taking shots from hundreds of yards away. Good grief. The rifle may be more accurate than the handgun, but it’s tge same low skilled officer pulling the trigger.

Very few active shooting events take place in wide open spaces, anyway. Those that do, tend to be a secondary location after a chase. Those can be joined by sharpshooter specialists with rifles, if needed.

Most of these events take place indoors and most are over before the cops even arrive, as the shooters tend to commit suicide upon hearing the police rolling up. If the cops need greater range against active shooters, then just install louder sirens on their cruisers.

Here’s a thought – most people don’t enjoy shooting 12 gauge slugs or OO buck – it’s loud and there’s a lot of recoil. Which, in practical terms, means less practice and therefore less-skilled cops handling the weapons. Plus the commonly held misconception that you really just need to point the shotgun in the general direction of the target.

ARs, on the other hand, are fun and easy to practice with, even (or especially) for smaller shooters. One hopes that this will lead to more practice and therefore more highly skilled users.

All guns are really loud (except .22 rifles) and that is why we use hearing protection when we shoot! Is a 12 gauge shotgun actually louder than a 5.56 rifle? I don’t know, but I doubt that is an issue for practice.

Recoil on the other hand certainly is an issue. The 5.56 is fun and easy for anyone to shoot. It has very little recoil. You can shoot it all day long. High brass 12 gauge loads like buck and slugs do kick pretty hard. You have a point there.

Geoff PR FTW! 300 blackout SBR with a suppressor. It would be about the same length as an unsuppressed (16″) AR, and it would be hearing safe. Also low recoil. Cost could be an issue. Oh hell it’s government money; just buy a truckload!

If I can carry a loaded semi-automatic rifle in my vehicle without any threat of sanctions from the state, then I support police who want to also carry a loaded rifle in their vehicle. Otherwise, I hope the Derenda gets his way and denies rifles to his patrol men and women.

This.
If I’m not allowed to buy a full featured rifle, then the cops shouldn’t be able to either. Let them try to use a rifle with a spur or FRS15 instead of a pistol grip. Restrict them to 10 round mags, and make them buy their ammo from their severely overpriced local gun store instead of ordering it from the cheapest retailer. Let them see how the lowly civilians live.

I think AR15 are good for police for all the same reasons they are good for me. If I was a cop I’d want a shotgun, an AR and a full size 9mm handgun at my disposal, to use as the scenario dictates.

Police should all have binoculars so they can assess a situation before they insert themselves into it. That will probably save a lot of lives. Most of all they should wear cameras so the process of sorting out bad cops vs bad actors is less susceptible to BS, special interests, media speculation, and bias.

Hey everybody, remember a few years ago when NYPD shot NINE people while trying to hit a guy that had only shot one? Good times. Question is, does Buffalo PD standaradize to NYPD? If so are they going to have to create a twelve pound trigger for their shiny new M4s?

Police using rifles means more innocent bystanders will be injured, shot and killed. Never knew a cop that didn’t have the urge to charge into a situation to show he was the “big man.” Cops feed on controlling others. Give them upgraded firepower, and they will interject themselves into dangerous situations where they should wait and watch.

Cops get to kill taxpayers because they have qualified immunity under the law. Where Joe Citizen may have to go in front of a grand jury for an incident as clear cut as using lethal force against an armed intruder into their home, a cop is more like a vigilante. The system encourages them to create confrontations. That’s what cops do.

Most departments still do not require a university degree. Why not, in the year 2016? Because the system wants morons that will follow orders and kick in doors, not Constitutional scholars. Chicago P.D. used to have a waiver for military service, so an applicant could duck the requirement to have at least crummy community college degree having been a private in the military.

Ever seen the I.Q. or MMPI scores of cops? Cop I.Q.s are below average for the population, and higher than average for alcoholism, divorce, suicide, drug abuse, and criminality. Rifles for cops is a great idea if you wish to advance the criminal police state.

Generally I’d say cops should be able to have any weapons that non-cop citizens can have, and vice versa. Of course, in NY that would mean that the ARs would need to have those goofy non-pistol grip stocks.

That was stricken, we’re back to the “normal” 10 rounders. Regarding the AR-15, non-law enforcement is restricted to the goofy looking AR’s or an AR with a “fixed” magazine. (Of course, in 5 minutes you can open the gun and ‘unfix’ the magazine, though then you’ll be breaking the law).

agreed these ARs need to be SAFE Act compliant. I mean we can’t have vicious assault rifles floating around.

They should probably also use a PCC version as well, something 9mm. They would get the enhanced accuracy of a rifle platform, a bit more velocity and they wouldn’t be contributing to the “high caliber” weapons market.

Replace “ASSSAAAULLLT Weapon or HIGH-POWERED OMG Rifle” with semi-auto rifle and most would say “What? They don’t already?”. They should have them and should be trained to use them.

The obvious problem with any new equipment purchase is training and support, it seems every high ranking Officer, Sheriff etc. loves to trot out old milsurp “tank” for the cameras after a seriously expensive spray job then let the thing rust in a lot while insurance is still being paid (x1000 if NYPD).

If these officers are just going to be handed a rifle and have to self train and sight-in at the one 25 yard indoor range with plastic bullets once a year. It’s an accident waiting to happen.

Either too many higher ranking officers hold a mistaken belief that if they buy it the budget dept. will find money for training next year or just don’t care as long as new and shiny hits a headline.

Is the chief admitting that his officers would be no more disciplined with their rifles than the untrained, undisciplined common citizen with a gun? That the ARs would be more lethal because the cops can’t handle them safely and proficiently? Is the chief doing us all a favor by not letting his officers put the entire neighborhood at risk in an armed confrontation?

The right long gun for urban police officer is a pistol caliber carbine. It will give the responding officer the ability to put accurate fire on the threat at the ranges they will actually face. The longest recorded SWAT shot in the DC area is under 70 yards which is well within the effective range of an AR-15 chambered in 9mm.

That 400-yard-shot supposedly took place at the Washington Monument. There’s a lot of open space on the National Mall, so that distance seems plausible, but that kind of range would definitely be a very, very rare edge case in most urban environments.

The Buffalo News aspires to be a leftist propaganda outlet like the New York Times, but where the NYT is well written, the Buffalo New is amateur, rife with inaccuracies, and sometimes downright dumb. No surprise that the former editor, Margaret Sullivan, took a promotion to go work for the NYT. In the meantime, the dwindling Buffalo News subscribers are left a paper that is barely worth the ink it’s printed with. Need to find an incorrect, ignorant anti-gun story supporting New York’s draconian gun laws? Check the Buffalo News.

I have no problem with police using any weapon that any non-cop civilian could own in their jurisdiction. That means these New York officers would get SAFE Act compliant rifles with no pistol grip and reduced capacity magazines, and whatever other restrictions apply.

However, rifles, ammo, spare parts, training and qualification expenses for 500 officers is going to run into 7 figures pretty quickly. Is that kind of expenditure worth it when most of those cops probably already have a shotgun in the car and at least minimal training on it? How many times a year are Buffalo police taking 100-yard shots at perps?

They are important to have. Like I’ve said on here before, a semi automatic AR-15 variant is all I need. Nothing that regular citizens can’t have (at least in my state).

That range is important, even from an active shooter standpoint. I transferred to an SRO position in January (Sorry RF) and some of the hallways in my school are 150 yards from end to end, straight shot. The role of the SRO, at least where I am, has shifted. Essentially we are there in case kids need to be broken up during a fight (and unless one party was seriously hurt we typically don’t charge over a schoolyard fight) and to respond in case an active shooter type event does occur. When I was transferred, the department took my issues S&W m&P 15 MOE from me since I apparently had no need for it.

I will say that training is important, and I think the departments with crappier handgun training will also have insufficient rifle training. The rifle course for my department was outstanding and was honestly superior to the training I got as an Army infantryman. But I doubt Buffalo would follow suit.

What police officers need is more training. From my understanding HPD officer’s knowledge of firearms is minimal and sketchy at best. Also they don’t seem to have a GPSes in their cruiser. While out walking I’ve been stopped so many times by officers asking for directions.

I absolutely have nothing against police officers, I have friends and extended family members who are or were police officers. While working for the city, my division worked under the police department, for six or seven years and worked closely with them for fourteen years before that. That being said, this is New York State. Are they nuts? And being across the border from Canada. What kind of message does it send skipping bullets across Lake Erie or shooting wildly at some murderous felon and sending those shoot across the border? New York polititions don’t want their officers armed. Disarm them. The political representative should teach these officers to talk “bullsh-t”. That way no liberal voter will be killed. After all, all lives matter. Even the cockroach! Oh yeah, don’t mention South Los Angeles or Miami to the politico bureau in N.Y. To them, it didn’t happen.

AR 15s are great tools for both the police and non-police when the situation demands it. Rifles are inherently more accurate than pistols. I personally want my local police to have them and gladly pay taxes for it.

I’d rather cops have rifles. It’s not any less lethal than a handgun, and it’s more accurate – which, given what we’ve seen accuracy-wise from police, would not be a bad thing purely from a public safety issue.

IIRC, light .223 bullets also fragment much better in drywalls and such if the bullet misses the target.

Born and raised in Buffalo. I currently live in a rural county to the North of the city, where the Niagara River runs into Lake Ontario.

When this story hit the news last week, I was surprised that BPD didn’t have patrol rifles. Considering the gang problems in the city and the fact that there have been terrorists arrested in a suburb directly to the South of the city where there is a substantial Yemeni population (in 2003 AlQueda and 2015 ISIS) there is a need for the officers to have ARs.

I am also curious what other agencies in the area are armed with. Niagara Falls is the other major city in the area, and is a prime terrorist target, both for the hundreds of thousands of tourists that visit the falls and the target that is the Robert Moses power plant (Wikipedia says is the 3rd largest in the country).

PS the UnSAFE Act is stupid and will be ruled unconstitutional. Please don’t lump the rest of NY in with NYC. WNY wouldn’t mind if they slid off into the Atlantic. I am as far West and North as possible and 8 hours away.

The WIlliam Cruse shooting incident in Palm Bay, FL (1987) demonstrates the need for police officers to have a decent rifle in the car. Cruse had a rifle and was able to kill and wound multiple people including two police officers during the incident. The responding officers only had their sidearms and shotguns and were killed because they could not get within effective engagement range with their weapons. The police were forced to engage Cruse with inadequate weapons as he swept through the supermarket shooting at anything that moved. Following this incident Palm Bay equipped their police cruisers with rifles. Saying officers don’t need a decent semi-automatic rifle is disingenuous at best. Most officers will probably never need the capability, but those rare occasions occur when it is absolutely necessary to have the range and capacity immediately.

There are thousands of NRA & ISRA members in Illinois too stupid to figure out that Duty to Inform w/ criminal penalties in the IL carry bill is legalized execution. The fact that the anti-gun Chiefs of Police that opposed concealed carry for 40 years, then supplied the Duty to Inform language to the NRA’s pet rat Todd Vandermyde should be a clue.

Off duty or retired cops don’t have to tell on-duty cops that they are police, much less that they are armed. That’s all handled as “professional courtesy.” Which tells you DTI for “officer safety” is lies. If DTI were important, cops would have to do it. Retired officer LEOSA carry is the same good old boy Klan law system gone nationwide.

Cops having AR-15s, IMO, doesn’t make them “more heavily armed” for the most part, it just means they have an extra weapon available in case the situation warrants it. It’s not like people are advocating assault rifles for them or Humvees mounted with .50 caliber, or what-have-you.

I think they should have sidearm (name your flavor) Shotgun ( again name your flavor) and a long gun, sbr, etc. I also think that one morning a week/ bimonthly is range day with free ammo and trainers/ instructors not evaluators. They need more training so they know what tools and when to apply them.

Case in point. Cops are the most likely to be able to stop a threat without bystander injury if they’re provided the precision and power that a rifle offers. Even at close range it’s often the difference between a dead bad guy and some dead people. I don’t like militarized police but a simple rifle in a car is not military kit.

Those amateur-hour f-wits fat-ass morons should burn in hell, were there such a place. Instead they belong in prison, as cellies of the most vicious MS13 members to be found in the facility. After conviction, ‘natch.

They let the man bleed out. I don’t care if he’s effen El Chapo himself, we put them down and if they’re still breathing, we save them for trial. Absolutely disgusting, and none of them deserve anything but a fair trial, and to be barred from LE forever even if they are ‘cleared’.

English tabloids reported that he used a Bushmaster — the same type of rifle used in Newtown! — to kill his neighbor and two firefighters. The US papers reported that all three were killed with a shotgun.

No matter. Using the Commissioner’s “logic,” cops should never carry Glocks because the Virginia Tech murderer used a Glock. And they shouldn’t drive cars because a nut in Chicago intentionally ran over his family with a car, killing his father. Or . . .

Never mind. The PC has just proven that, if cops are like him, they’re just too stupid to have a rifle.

It is well past time to start disarming most cops. Citizens should always be able to outgun government employees. Give them a radio and a whistle until they start learning who is the servant and who is the master.

the PBA “is aware the department has a SWAT team with increased firepower.” He claims it can take up to an hour before the unit arrives at the scene after a patrol officer encounters a threat.
Which is why i am not a big fan of SWAT teams. SWAT tends to get misused.

I honestly had no idea that there was still any conversation about this. Average coppers have had at least one per squad (or everybody depending on jurisdiction) for over a decade in the worlds I know well.

There’s obvious reasons full-autos are reserved for tac, but the standard-semi poodle popper? I really didn’t know there were depts that hadn’t issued them to some/most officers who wanted them.

If the po-po really need long guns then it should be a T/C Carbine [or similar single shot rifle] in .223 with a 20″ barrel and a fixed 2x scope! Add 10 rounds to the issuing officer and have a nice day…If they can’t get the job done with this setup then they need to….

Personally I’d rather bring a long gun to ANY gunfight over 10 yards away. I don’t care if I don’t look as awesome as I would with a M1911 with my left hand behind my back. An AR is simply better at putting more rounds on target faster. Capacity, sights, recoil-management, caliber… everything points to bringing the most gun to the fight you can without blowing up innocents.

The first 20 minutes of this police radio recording is always a compelling argument for giving rifles to patrolmen, particularly if your SWAT team is prone to hanging out at the beach or otherwise being unavailable during a crisis.

All cops, IMO, should have access to an AR-15 or a Mini 14 at least. They ought to generally use the handgun I’d suppose, but if the situation warrants it, definitely they may need a rifle available. For example, what if you have a cop responding by themselves to say a Newtown situation. They ought to be able to get out an AR-15 and then head into the building. There was one incident where the cop had an AR-15 I believe, which was very good because the criminal was armed with an automatic fire SKS rifle.